“If you draw from me as I am now, Elijah,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to find yourself another source.”

“Don’t be too rash to assume I always come for what is flowing in your veins, clogged with poppy at the moment, no doubt.”

A sarcastic remark had already formed on Tristan’s tongue when he decided to swallow it down his raw throat. He opted to survey Elijah, who was standing by his dead limbs, instead.

—

It happened all too fast.

He was in pursuit of a particular cunning fox which had been evading his grasp for the better part of the hour. What a fine creature it was, with its sinewy body covered by a fiery lustrous coat that stood out amongst the green bushes like a precious ruby. Its fur would make a splendid pair of gloves for his little sister on her upcoming birthday. Aurora was always tearful during the week of her birth, for it was also the annual mourning period of their lady mother when everyone in the castle was plunged in the hassle of preparation while their lord father was too busy resenting the cause of his wife’s untimely death to pay proper attention to his only daughter. It mostly fell on Tristan, the only one to acknowledge her existence during this time, year after year to figure out a way to cheer her up and hopefully, a thoughtful present from her beloved brother would be able to lighten up Aurora’s mood. Imagine how the gloves would compliment her hair.

Such was the instant thought hitting Tristan’s mind upon spotting the canine. With a scarce reckless disregard for everything else manifesting in his heart, he immediately kicked his horse after it, leaving behind his servants. That was the first and most grievous mistake he had ever made in his twenty-five years of life. The fox proved to be as fast and clever as it was beautiful, and while it managed to dodge every of Tristan’s well aimed arrow and the sharp jaws of his hounds by the skin of its teeth, it led its pursuers deeper and deeper into the forest. Eager to capture his game, Tristan had not noticed such, and when he finally did, it was a tad too late.

The fox vanished behind one of the larger bush and out of it sprung, a black lump moving too fast for Tristan to determine just what sort of beast it was at first. His strayed arrows must have missed the elusive fox and lodged themselves into the creature’s flesh instead, rousing it from a peaceful slumber into a soaring rage. Frightened by the sudden introduction of a ferocious threat, the horse took several steps back, maneuvering around the beast’s assault, and neighed loudly. Tristan squeezed his thighs and pulled the reins with all his arms’ strength, fighting his horse’s panic and barely winning. He was able to see it now: a furious black boar with its nostrils flaring white puffs of fog, its tusks protruding from its mouth like a pair of crescent-shaped knives, and its stout legs impatiently plowing the soil beneath. The end of the arrow stuck out from its left socket, from which blood continued to water the withered grass. His hounds were growling, the kind of low, ominous sounds they made to alarm their master of imminent danger. Never before had they encountered boars and thus, at the moment, they appeared unsure of the next move, their eyes zooming into the target and their jaws hanging open in anticipation for their next order. Truth be told, Tristan himself was not any certain than his hounds since it was the first time he’d been met with a raging boar − boars, said to be more fearsome than wolves, were almost nonexistent in this area. His hand went to the hilt of his sword. He had to think and act fast…

His concentration was ruptured with a blood-curling cry from his horse and the sudden shift in balance. It was as though for a split second the sky and the earth had swapped places.

Later, as he recalled that disastrous turn of event, Tristan would swear he had heard the sound of his bones snap like a dry wig when his body hit the ground, thrown off his mount’s back in a violent response to the beast’s attack. Nonetheless, at that crucial moment, he lost all his other senses beside his ability to feel tremendous agony. Pain spiked through his spine straight into his brain and in an evil stroke of luck, his right leg had been impaled on a sucker that grew vertically like a javelin. His brief cry was lost in the cacophony of the horse’s neighs and his hounds’ raucous barks as they divided and circled the boar, fully baring their dripping fangs.

He wished he had felt the pain, for pain denoted that the level of damage was not yet lethal and that his injuries were still curable, but not so long after that heart-jabbing ache he began to feel nothing from his waist down. Not even his calf, bleeding profusely from where it was fixed on the sucker, gave the slightest sensation. Despite a part of him’s knowing that he could not, as he had heard so many dreadful tales about this devastating condition, he tried to do something with his legs, anything at all; nevertheless, his desperate efforts were in vain because he could not feel his toes, let alone produced any sort of movement with his limbs. Total paralysis. Terror and absolute despair were the last things he remembered with clarity before the damp, cold hand of darkness clamped over his eyes.

…

Tristan had no way to tell how much time had passed with his consciousness’s flickering like a moribund yet persistent fire on a mostly burnt out wicker. Refusing to be extinguished, it hungrily devoured each and every sporadic wind to flare up, albeit momentarily, allowing Tristan a few blotches of image, sound or sensation, before withering down once again. He heard his hounds’ howling and the boar’s screams but there was no way for him to decide for himself what had and was happening. And even when they were very near, in his ears they sounded distant like echoes carried by the winds. He felt something warm and sticky plastering his face which he vaguely guessed to be blood − the boar’s? His hounds’? Perhaps both. He knew his hounds as loyal and fierce, sometimes to the point of being bloodthirsty − had personally and diligently trained them to be so; and despite their initial apprehension, they would not flee with their tails between their hind legs and abandon their injured master, not once blood had been spilled, theirs or their designated target.

Tristan woke not with pain but with the sore absence of it; truth be told, there was a dead numbness that blanketed him from his waist down while his torso wasn’t much more active. Poisoned with deadly lethargy his arms and shoulders were, so much so that moving their stone-weight muscles seemed a herculean task. His own flesh felt alien to him as though he was a mere specter dead-locked inside a host body; although the gracious host tolerated his parasitic existence’s latching onto it’s true master’s, it granted him zero access to the use of its flesh. He tried fighting for control, even a tiny fraction of it, yet the foreign shell was beyond adamant and he himself too feeble to make any change, however insignificant.

How he wanted to blame this depressing condition on the effect of copious amount of poppy flooding his veins in place of the blood he had spilled, if the nauseously sweet smell pervading the air he breathed in with exertion was any indication. How he wanted to believe it would only be temporary, and once the medicine wore off − it would soon, he would be screaming his heart out for the soothing embrace of insensitivity again. Or perhaps all the poppy in his system was still not enough, for he was much aware of his surroundings and situation: bedridden and paralyzed. Perhaps it would be better if he would just succumb to the poppy’s gentle hand and cast himself adrift in the dreamless current, all the while holding onto an unwavering optimism that once he woke up, his condition would greatly improve. No. His mind remained staggeringly clear despite the body’s relentless effort to keep it muddled, and he knew rather than be aware that his state would never discontinue as long as he remained breathing. Any chance of recovery had already been splintered with his spine.

It would weigh a little less heavy on his heart if he could cry out. There was heat pricking under his eyelids and his eyesight became a tad blurry as the result; nevertheless, his eyes were painfully dry.

The only silver lining in this bleakness, Tristan mused, was that he was lying on his dear old bed, in his dear old room − far better than lying in a bed of scorched leaves with the starry sky above for proof. In the opposite corner of the room was his dearest Aurora, draping over the table in a very unladylike manner that normally would be the subject of her brother’s endless tease. Of course Tristan was in no bloody mood to make fun of her; in fact, her posture caused a single tear to roll down his cheek while everything else could not have. Even in her sleep, weariness was visible on her countenance, etched in the tiny crease between her eyebrows and the glittering tear stains around her closed eyes. Sobbed herself to sleep she must have. He remembered vaguely her crying his name over and over like chanting a broken mantra. He wouldn’t dare the thought of what would become of Aurora if fate had dictated that the human known as Tristan de Martel should perish tonight.

In spite of his body’s protest, Tristan extended his right arm towards the small table by his bed. Slowly and shakily, as if it was wrapped in a bulky cloth made of lead. Swear to god he couldn’t feel the nightly chill raising goosebumps on his skin. His throat was so parched that a sip of the cold water in the jug would feel heavenly. Should he raise his voice loud enough − he supposed he could do that much, Aurora would wake and instantly come to his aid, and that was precisely what he didn’t want to. Let the poor girl have her exhausted sleep. Besides, if he was unable to perform this nothing-task, he might just bite off his tongue right now. He couldn’t bear leaving Aurora behind, but death would be a thousand times more preferable than a useless, lingering existence, a boulder blocking her life road ahead.

Sweat dampening his forehead, Tristan uttered a silent curse. His fingertips had already reached the grip; if only he had had a little more strength in his quivering hand. He ground his teeth, trying once again. This time his effort was fruitful: he could pull the jug towards him. Just a little more. His joy was stillborn however, because when the jug was at the edge, its bottom hit a chink on the wooden surface. That, coupled with Tristan’s effort, produced an unfavorable outcome of the jug’s tumbling down.

He squeezed his eyes in heartfelt anticipation of an avoidable shattering noise. Seconds passes and nothing happened; in his chamber it was quiet as ever. When he opened his eyes, he found a tall figure looming over him. The jug was held steady in the man’s hand, hence its narrow escape from its death.

The man’s was a familiar face, too familiar and the last one Tristan wished to see. Not in this pathetic state.

“Elijah,” he breathed the name.

The bloodsucker gave a light nod in acknowledgment of Tristan’s default ‘greeting’ for their nocturnal rendezvous. He reached for a bowl on the table and filled it half-full.

His touch as he laid a hand under Tristan’s neck and lifted his head up with unexpected but otherwise much appreciated tenderness was cold like an iron blade dipped in frost. And that wasn’t because Tristan was suffering from a rampant fever.

“I waited for Aurora to fall asleep,” explained Elijah in soft voice, as if he felt the need of an explanation for his unusual low body temperature. His voice was even and steady, suggesting the hours basking in the late autumnal winds had had little effect on his person, as expected from a supernatural being. He stirred the bowl gently to damp Tristan’s chapped lips first, before helping the human consume the entire content.

The water was bland, yet it brought a cool relief to his thirst.

Elijah’s thumb swiped his thumb across the corner of Tristan’s lips, collecting a strayed drop.

“Some more?”

“No…. Thank you.”

He settled the bowl and the jug on their former place, making not the smallest sound.

“A boar, wasn’t it? I heard from the servants that followed you. Pursuing a beast in its own territory without your human company wasn’t a wise move, I must say.”

“It was originally a fox,” said Tristan with a smile that wasn’t very much a smile. “The boar was a lousiest twist.”

“It may not make you feel any better, but the ‘lousiest twist’ was found eradicated by your fierce and loyal hounds. Not without a dire price, of course. One of them managed to lead the servants to your site, where both his alive and fallen friends were guarding.”

Having known even before Elijah’s tale didn’t prevent a sigh from Tristan.

“If you draw from me as I am now, Elijah,” he said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to find yourself another source.”

“Don’t be too rash to assume I always come for what is flowing in your veins, clogged with poppy at the moment, no doubt.”

A sarcastic remark had already formed on Tristan’s tongue when he decided to swallow it down his raw throat. He opted to survey Elijah, who was standing by his dead limbs, instead.

His hand was on Tristan’s left thigh, and even without the voluminous covers, he knew he could not feel the touch. He supposed he could keep a straight face as he watched Elijah tear his calf from his knee with a fraction of his inhuman strength.

“Your father was beyond furious,” Elijah informed him. “And he almost had the doctor drawn and quartered for daring to reveal the dreadful truth about your injury.”

“That I was aware.”

Elijah’s gaze lingering on Tristan’s face evoked a vague sense of uneasiness in him; from Tristan’s perspective, the bloodsucker appeared to be scourging his expression for hints of other emotions than blankness. Would he delight in the mortal suffering, Tristan wondered, knowing that such a doomed fate would never befall him, a creature that continued to cheat death and time with each breath he drew?

A sort of unfounded anger rose in Tristan’s guts; he clenched his fists and refused to avert his eyes from Elijah’s gaze.

“The scent of your blood under the bandage was distracting,” Elijah said. “The pain should be too great for poppy to neutralize it.”

“Even if you tore my legs from me,” he voiced his earlier, macabre thought, “I wouldn’t feel any difference, from now on and always. The lord’s son, crippled for life.”

“It isn’t necessarily so.”

And with a saturnine look he did what Tristan least expected: his eyes shifted color to a shade darker than red and his fangs became visible from his parted lips. Using them, he pierced his own wrist.

His tone was eerily serene despite his haunting visage as he spoke, “Mine is a fiend’s blood — you yourself have said so, and it can do what only fiends can.”

The puncture wounds closed in front of Tristan’s widening eyes, and the skin was mended with the perfection that could invoke the best seamstress’s jealousy.

Tristan started to catch his implication.

“It may fix this disastrous turn of event. The question is, would you—”

“Give me your blood!”

Hesitation was free from his weak voice, reduced to mere whispers, only resolution.

The risk that he might be locked in an everlasting curse like Elijah and his siblings was well-perceived and Tristan was willing to take it, consequences be damned. Any kind of existence would be better than one of a cripple, dead from his waist down.

With no further ado, Elijah ripped open a gap on his wrist, considerably wider and deeper than his previous demonstrative one. His own blood colored his stubbly chin, dripping onto the front of his beige tunic. There, a piece of flesh bitten off should take a little more time for his demonic blood to heal than neat puncture wounds. With one hand supporting Tristan’s head, elevating him up so that he wouldn’t choke, Elijah brought the other to Tristan’s mouth. Rather than repulsed by the close-up view of mangled flesh drenched in blood, he was pulled in by a peculiar magnetism. Pressing his lips to the wound in a mockery of a chastest kiss, he sucked like a babe starving for its mother’s milk, and for the first time in his life the human had truly known what it felt to have the life essence of another in his mouth. Savory and strong, its was a unique flavor unlike beer or any kind of wine, and he had tried many kinds of wine as one privilege of a wealthy lord’s son. More than just taste, it was imbued with virulent power he could feel literally whirling on his tongue. He swallows it as fast as he could in an absurd fear of having it taken back by the generous giver.

Not long after Elijah had put a distance between them, Tristan sensed the life rushing back to his deceased muscles. Truly felt it by the marrow of his bones. He tossed away the many layers of covering, ripped the bandage with haste and found his legs as they were prior the incident.

Elijah’s thumb swiped across Tristan’s lips, doing away the telltale smudges. “You may want to contain your scream of joy or risk ruining Aurora’s sleep,” he reminded Tristan, a faint smile clinging on the seam of his lips.

“What am I now?” Tristan asked. “Something like you?”

“It’s rude to refer to your savior as ‘something’, the lord Tristan. I could use a little gratitude,” he replied. “You are not like me, not yet. However, in the following day if you managed to get attacked by a boar the second time, you might.”

“That was how Lucien showed up in front of me wound-free, wasn’t it?”

Elijah’s smirk never failed to churn his inside. “That smart head of yours had better be used to come up with an explanation for your miraculous recovery overnight.”

One foot on the windowsill, Elijah turned his head and said, “How about your heartfelt prayer was answered by merciful God and an angel descended?”